The belly dancer who became Mrs Prince

As a 16-year-old belly dancer, Mayte Garcia caught the eye of the then 31-year-old artist known as Prince... but as her tell-all book reveals, there was to be no happy ever after

B y the age of eight, Mayte Garcia was earning money as a belly dancer. When she appeared on a TV show called That’s Incredible! she was introduced as ‘the mystical, magical Princess Mayte, the world’s youngest professional belly dancer’.

Three years later, she and her sister watched the film Purple Rain for the first time, and became obsessed by its star, Prince. They would enact scenes from it together. ‘I was always Apollonia… Prince’s love interest in the movie,’ she writes. She told her mother she was going to marry him; she was 11 years old at the time.

Her father, an officer in the US Army and an award-winning former bodybuilder – Mr University of Puerto Rico, no less – was posted to Germany, and took his family with him. While pursuing her studies, Mayte continued her professional belly-dancing career. By chance, she attended the same school as Priscilla Presley had done. ‘I remember thinking how cool it was that she had been going to this very same high school when she met Elvis, not even suspecting that my life was about to change in much the same way hers had.’

Aged 16, she drove with her mother and sister from Germany to Barcelona to watch Prince perform live. ‘It was a marathon jumping into a tornado swallowed by wild horses,’ she recalls. She is never knowingly understated. ‘My mouth was wide open, but I was too in awe to scream.’

Her mother – who, says Mayte, ‘was, and is, a stunner’ – was ambitious for her young daughter. She was determined that Mayte should join Prince’s show as a dancer. ‘I don’t care what it takes, we are going to get that videotape to Prince.’

Mayte packed her dance-tape with her business card and a brief hand-written note. ‘Hi, my name is Mayte. I saw your show a few weeks ago. I noticed you had some Middle Eastern vibe in a song you played. I wanted you to see my belly dancing. I hope you like it. Oh and I’m 16 years old.’

It did the trick. Having driven to another Prince show – this one in Mannheim – she got talking to ‘one of the dancers doing his after-party girlpatrol duty’. One thing led to another, and before the show her forceful mother got the video to Prince. Mayte was approached by a bodyguard. ‘Hi. Prince saw your tape. He wants to meet you.’

The meeting went well: Prince took her phone number, and the phone was ringing when they got home. He wanted to see her again. Before their next meeting, in a hotel, the door opened and ‘a nice gentleman introduced himself as Earl and told me he was going to do my hair’. Earl straightened her curly hair with a blow-drier. Then Prince came in and said: ‘Wow. You look pretty.’

They got on well, the 16-year-old belly-dancer and the 31-year-old superstar. ‘He treated me like a fellow artist,’ she insists. From that point on, they would speak on the phone ‘several times a week’. He would write her adoring letters employing his irritating mix of numerals and letters – ‘U’re so pretty. Thank u 4 coming into my world,’ and so on.

I’m afraid Mayte knows what you’re thinking. ‘People will draw conclusions based on their own belief systems,’ she says. But for her, they were ‘two kindred spirits who instantly recognised each other’ and, moreover, ‘this relationship was the opportunity to step out of my ordinary world into a rarified existence in which life itself is a work of art’.

They got into an unusual routine whereby Prince would send her cassettes of his music, and Mayte would send him back videos of her dancing to it. They would then discuss her latest dance over the phone. ‘We flirted, we giggled,’ she admits. But they didn’t have sex. ‘He never denied that the occasional impure thought crossed his mind, but the truth is, he was too wise and decent to take advantage of a 16-year-old girl…’ Nevertheless, from now on Mayte ‘hurried to class with a wink at Priscilla Presley’.

Prince invited Mayte to Paisley Park, his Minneapolis home. She stayed in the guest room, ‘all champagne-colored silk and plush pillows, crystals and white carpet’. Prince’s own bedroom had no windows; it was filled with candles, beads, veils and lava lamps. His walk-in closet was filled with clothes arranged by colour, with co-ordinating shoes below. His shoes all had generous heels, ‘so I didn’t realise for a long time that at 5ft 4in, I was actually two inches taller than him’.

For the first time, she danced in front of him. ‘The sensual undercurrent took me by surprise. I noticed when I stopped that Phe had taken a pillow from the sofa and was holding it in his lap.’ rince started writing songs about her. Jumping the gun, her father suggested 20% of profits, but was turned down. Mayte joined Prince’s dance troupe, and rose swiftly through the ranks. Though Prince would phone her day and night, he never let her have his phone number. He liked to be in control. Once, when she was in make-up, he entered suddenly, spotted a jar of whipped cream and said: ‘Is that yours?’ The make-up girl said, truthfully: ‘No, no, no. That’s mine, sir.’ Twenty minutes later, the tour accountant arrived and informed Mayte that he was docking her pay for that week.

But by now they had ‘become intimate’. Mayte celebrated by putting a smiley face in her diary. His former girlfriend, Carmen, who had been opening the show with her band, was ‘let go’, and replaced with another band. Mayte’s own dancing role continued to expand. ‘I was The Girl, dancing hard and loving it, kneeling to kiss his guitar, feeling wild and sexy and free.’ Around the same time, Prince sacked half his band. ‘I don’t want guys onstage with me. Just you,’ he explained.

Prince took to hypnotising Mayte,

I’m afraid Mayte knows what you’re thinking... But for her, they were kindred spirits